Mule spinners' cancer and the wool industry.

Although mule spinning has been used in the cotton and wool industries for about two centuries, the *earliest recorded cases of mule spinners' cancer were not reported until the end of the nineteenth century. From then on the number of cases rapidly increased. Evidence accumulated which strongly suggested that the mineral oil used to lubricate the mule spindles was the cause. It is remarkable that mule spinners' cancer was almost entirely confined to the cotton industry, and the wool industry has escaped with very few cases. This difference has never been satisfactorily explained. Various possibilities related to the personnel, the plant, and the process are examined in this paper. Mule spinning has been used in the cotton and wool industries for about two centuries. Although mule spinners' cancer has, for many years, been recognized as a hazard to workers on cotton mules, it is virtually unknown in mule spinners in the wool industry. It is interesting to consider why this should be. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, when the spinning mule was invented, mills sprang up in the small valleys where water power could be harnessed. Traditional agriculture continued in the nearby hills (Davies, I963). The machines, therefore , were lubricated with the readily available animal oils such as neatsfoot and perhaps sperm oil. In this country mineral oils were developed in the middle of the last century, at first in Derbyshire and then subsequently as shale oil in Scotland. Mineral oil soon replaced animal oil and, by the end of the century, was the only form of lubrication used. In I876 Joseph Bell published a paper on the occurrence of skin cancer among shale oil workers, and some ii years later a case of skin cancer was reported in a cotton mule spinner (Brockbank, 1941). In I910 Wilson of Manchester wrote the winning essay in the Tom Jones Prize Essay Competition. He pointed out that, out of 35 patients admitted to the Manchester Royal Infirmary with caneer of the scrotum, 25 were spinners ('mostly mule spinners') and five were labourers, three of whom had been mule spinners. He discussed as possible causes of the condition: mechanical factors, dust, grease constituents of the cotton, and repeated trauma. A judgement in the Lancashire County Court in I924 deciding that the disease arose 'out of and in the course of employment' and was attributable to mineral oil, caused some anxiety. …